Discuss - Ep #0159

[Watching Project]

Robservations #159

[MagnusTrask]

Vicki in VO: "... an illness so strange that doctors cannot diagnose it!"   Why, I've never heard of such a thing!  No, wait, that's been my life for 32 years.... So far, they can only say it's an illness so strange that one small-town MD with just a stethoscope, and probably one of those blood pressure testers, can't diagnose it.

It's too late for me to be influenced to like Laura just because she runs and plays with David, but I would be otherwise.

The term "ESP" is being thrown around pretty freely and loosely.  As I recall, this referred to telepathy, and the idea was supposed to be that telepathy might be a sense or faculty like the other five senses, and not supernatural, not connected with spells or witches, or magic.   This was often used as a science fiction premise, and in SF, magic is vorboten.

So it would get on my nerves when ESP was lumped in with the supernatural, as they're doing here.   It's sloppy thinking.   

[DarkLady]

MT, I can see why you're cross about the writers' mixing ESP and the supernatural, but maybe ESP is part of Laura's bag of tricks.

Frank first mentions Peter Guthrie of Dartmouth College in far-off New Hampshire, our first outside expert.

[MagnusTrask]

MT, I can see why you're cross about the writers' mixing ESP and the supernatural, but maybe ESP is part of Laura's bag of tricks.

just realized I'm probably jumping ahead one episode with the following, but it's hardly a real spoiler: The fact that Guthrie says he senses (how?) ESP all over the place in Collinwood is the one bit of evidence I've seen for Lydia's idea that Laura isn't physically popping into people's bedrooms, but into their minds.   Her "spell" on Liz could also be thought of as ESP too, I guess...

In a supernatural story I'd rather they used another term than "ESP", but in their "real" DS world (real for the characters living in it), both science and magic are real, so I can't expect them to separate the two, I suppose.

[Lydia]

Magnus, I didn't say Laura popped into people's minds.  My idea was probably that there was an image, and that if Vicky had come into David's room while he was seeing Laura-who-wasn't-really-there, Vicky would have seen Laura too, but that neither Vicky nor David would have been able to touch Laura.  And now I'm not so sure about that idea, anyway.  I'm mulling over alwaysdavid's idea of the underlying Laura entity being an actual phoenix bird - and I'm getting nowhere.

I agree that ESP does not seem like the right term to use in this situation, but it may be the right term for Frank Garner to use, because he doesn't know a thing, so he lumps everything supernatural and ghostly and extrasensory under the term ESP.

Vicky held her own in a very unpleasant confrontation with Laura.  In Vicky's shoes, I'd have emphasized the "You don't sign my paycheck" aspect of the matter, but Vicky still did pretty well.  Laura may be a creature fueled by fire, but she sure is capable of being cold as ice!

My big question about this episode is: did David Henesy, age under 10, have any idea of the double entendres that were possible in the dialogue that he and Diana Millay had about the fire?

And the question that should have occurred to me before is: why didn't Laura use fire on Elizabeth the way she used it on Sam Evans?

[MagnusTrask]

My big question about this episode is: did David Henesy, age under 10, have any idea of the double entendres that were possible in the dialogue that he and Diana Millay had about the fire?

And the question that should have occurred to me before is: why didn't Laura use fire on Elizabeth the way she used it on Sam Evans?

Laura's already attracting attention to the connection between her and fire.   I think she's wisely taking the least flashy action that she can.   Liz doesn't smoke, so that looks more suspicious.   Liz's injury or death by fire would turn everything upside down, bringing in the police, and no one would be in a frame of mind to make big changes soon, such as sending her off with David, even if she was beyond suspicion.

What I don't understand is why she necessarily needs legal custody.   I suppose even David would resist if the family wasn't behind it.

Maybe I didn't want to notice the double entendres with David, depending on what they were, because I didn't...

It's Frank's expert whom I blame more for the loose "ESP" talk.   If I'd been in the room with Garner, though, I think I'd have had questions to try to clear up the sloppy term usage...

[alwaysdavid]

When Vickie shuts the door the mirror on the supposed stone wall shakes. Vickie thinks  Laura is behind the illness and a dr Peter  Guthrie seems to be the answer to the problems. Laura vows no matter wha t she will get David. She is determined for sure.

[Lydia]

Laura's already attracting attention to the connection between her and fire.   I think she's wisely taking the least flashy action that she can.

But how interesting that Laura has a powerful option other than fire!  Why didn't she use that on Sam?

What I don't understand is why she necessarily needs legal custody.   I suppose even David would resist if the family wasn't behind it.

It may be that Laura wants to get David fully away from Collinwood so she'll have a completely free hand to do the needful.  Or perhaps the timing of the needful is very precise, so she must be sure that she'll have David at exactly the right pyrotechnical moment, and that he won't be stuck in his room pretending to do homework.

[MagnusTrask]

But how interesting that Laura has a powerful option other than fire!  Why didn't she use that on Sam?

Well, she's still human, in some strange way, and humans in scripts and in real life often do things that we react to with "What were they thinking?"   Even smart characters do irrational, stupid things because of over-confidence, impulsiveness, or because it's just their nature.   I suppose she was acting on impulse, just "being herself", and if you were very prone to anger and could combust at will, using that power would be irresistable.    It may also just feel very good in some way we can't imagine...

With Liz, after the controversy with Sam, I suppose her intelligence woke up, and she realized these ploddingly ordinary little humans might actually be starting to catch on to what she was, and she changed tactics.   There are many people who possess intelligence and better judgment, I think, but who would really rather not have to use it.  They can though, when necessary.  In her case, smiting by fire's just so much more satisfying..